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With an Art Deco-style main building and two (rather more comfortable) annexes, this hotel sits amongst greenery, with fine views over the town, the sea and Étretat’s famous cliffs, Falaises d’Aval and d’Amont.

Most often found in cake shops rather than in restaurants, these individual, melt-in-the-mouth pastries are each filled with a whole small apple or pear, peeled and cored and flavoured with cinnamon.

Until the French Revolution, only wealthy landowners had the right to keep pigeons, and the size of the dovecote (colombier ) was a mark of prosperity. Look out for Normandy’s many fine examples, mellow with age: circular, square or polygonal, tiled and half-timbered, or patterned in brick and flint.

The friendly and efficient Duguesclin is the best place to stay in this little fishing port in the midst of the D-Day landing beaches.

Take the route submersible to see one of Cotentin’s unique natural havens, Havre de la Vanlée – but be warned, the road becomes heavily flooded during the dramatic spring tides.

Admire the giant waterwheel that drove the machinery of this former paper mill on the River Sée.

The heart of Écouis is the church of Notre-Dame, built by Enguerrand de Marigny in 1313. The ruined 12th-century Abbaye de Fontaine Guérard is worth a short excursion.

At noon, the copper strip on the floor of the nave shows the position of the sun’s rays.

In bad weather, an indoor swimming pool can be a godsend; the best is here, with a 54 m (180 ft) slide.

Nestling between two cliffs, Falaises d’Aval and d’Amont, this picturesque village was a sleepy place until the 19th-century onslaught of writers, painters and Parisian holiday-makers. For the best view of Falaise d’Aval – an extraordinary rock formation with a natural arch, which Maupassant likened to an elephant dipping its trunk into the sea – climb to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, the chapel on top of Falaise d’Amont. Nearby, a museum and monument commemorate aviators Nungesser and Colia, whose aeroplane was last seen near here on the first, failed attempt to fly the Atlantic in 1927. In Étretat itself, visit the place du Maréchal-Foch, where 16th-century houses cluster around timbered halles – an attractive 1920s reconstruction of a wooden covered market.